Mobile phones are ubiquitous devices used by an ever-increasing body of users who exhibit tendencies to carry their mobile phones with them wherever they go. Thus, it is not uncommon for users to bring their mobile phones to many different environments, including offices, restaurants, public transportation, private vehicles, and even to lavatories.
One salient feature of mobile phones is a signaling mechanism for handling announcement of incoming calls such as a ringer or a vibration device. Proper social etiquette often requires that users lower the volume setting of their phone ringer when located in a quiet location such as a quiet office meeting room. Conversely, users often prefer a louder volume setting in a noisy setting such as a crowded train station, in order to ensure that the ringing of the device is properly heard and that an incoming call is not missed. Furthermore, in such noisy environments users sometimes prefer an additional vibration signal when an incoming call arrives.
Towards this end, most phone handsets include mechanisms for adjusting a loudness of a ringer. Some devices provide user interfaces for defining multiple signaling profiles, where each profile specifies a behavior that the ringing device and/or the vibrating device are to exhibit upon detection by the phone handset of an incoming call. A user of these devices can manually select the appropriate signaling profile in accordance with his or her immediate physical environment.
One commonly used profile is the “meeting” profile, whereby an incoming call is announced such that a user is informed without interfering with the meeting. Additional common profiles include “normal”, and “outside” (extremely high volume).
Unfortunately, as users carry their mobile devices from one physical environment to another, they often forget or neglect to manually activate the appropriate signaling profile for signaling incoming calls. This can lead to undesirable consequences, such as missed incoming calls in noisy environments or embarrassing situations wherein a mobile phone generates a loud noise in quiet environment.
There is an apparent need for telephone handsets that appropriately handle announcement of incoming calls without requiring users to manually attend to device settings.